PHILOSOPHERS I DON'T LIKE

Actually I do like Nietzche in the sense of having affectionate feelings for him, I just don't buy into a word of what he says. I'm always amazed when fans of his tell me that they felt liberated after reading him. Nietzche had no intention of liberating people like them. He would have been appalled at the thought! His desire was to subordinate them to a new master, the superman.

I hate to say it, but Nietzche was not a nice guy. He was reputedly nice to his students and friends and some of his writings have an appealing quality, but when it came to content he was able to steel himself to astonishing harshness. He didn't care who got hurt. His philosophy seemed to be, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.


Of course the National Socialists loved Nietzche, in fact it's hard to imagine nazism without Nietzche. Fans like to say that his name was hijacked by thugs who didn't understand him, but I think they understood him surprisingly well. If you read what Nietzche actually said you see dozens of parallels with the kind of things that came out of Germany in the 30s. I don't think Nietzche would have approved of Hitler or the Holocaust but that doesn't let him off the hook. The spirit ofNational Socialism owed a lot to Nietzche and it's silly to ignore that.

One of the reasons Nietzche is so hotly debated is that his opinions are so hard to pin down. He's both mild and harsh in the same book, sometimes in the same paragraph. Nice guy, hard guy...it depends which sentense you're reading. It's well known that he was clinically crazy later in life but, reading him, it's hard to resist the notion that he was skewered even in mid-life. He had tons of literary talent but it's hard to imagine that he was ever taken seriously as a philosopher.

The other guy that I don't like is Machievelli. He looks like such a sweet guy in the portrait above, but he was anything but sweet in "The Prince, " which is a truly disturbing book.

I'm familiar with the argument that he was the founder of modern political science and was simply trying to save his city from ruin. It doesn't wash. We already had political science written by the Greeks and Romans. Machievelli simply added venality to it. As for the city falling apart, you wonder if the cure was worse than the disease.

The harm might have been contained if only a handfull of princes had the book but the printing press made it accessable to everyone. All of a sudden lots of ordinary people were wondering if they should fight dirty to get what they wanted. People who stuck to traditional ideals of honesty and charity must have found themselves wondering if they were patsies. I like the modern world but it has an undeniable coarse and abrasive tone to it. Machiavelli's one of the people responsible for that.

THE ACHILLES HEEL OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Fernandel: Hey, you guys like Greek philosophy don't you? Good, so do I!

Uncle Eddie asked me to tell you that he really liked the two "Kill Bill" movies but when a commenter asked him to defend them he cringed, and for good reason. The fact is that it takes twice the energy to defend something than it does to attack it.

That's because Greek philosophy, which shaped the way we make arguments, never devoted much time to the defense side. The Greek philosophers arose during a time of change in Greece and their job was to pave the way for that change by attacking the establishment. The poor establishment never got it's share of philosophy.


The best the Greeks could do for the defense side was to come up with rhetoric and oratory. Rhetoric teaches the arguer to flatter the audience and establish himself as a likable and trustworthy speaker. He's saying, in effect, "If you like me then you should like my argument. Trust me. "

That seems like a shabby way to argue but really, what choice is there? Surely the establishment can't always be wrong. Surely revolutionaries can't always be right. There has to be some way to argue the defense side of things and the Greeks haven't given us much to work with.

Actually the Greeks came up with another way to argue for the defense. That way was to limit the people debating to the landowners. The thinking was that people who had a financial stake in stability and tradition could be trusted not to carry attack arguments too far.

I don't agree with this but you have to admit that it's interesting.

PHILOSOPHY CORNER

My favorite recent films are both deeply philosophical. Hurry up and rent them

so we can talk about them!

The first is 'The Devil wears Prada" which asks the question, "What kind of person really makes the world work?" The film's amazing answer is, a mean, self-centered, dominating, talented tyrant like the character Maryl Streep plays.

I believe it. My hunch is that at the heart of everything really worthwhile is a tyrannical genius who wills the thing into existence and who sacrifices everything to keep it alive (no, I'm not talking about John K.). Everyone else is either too dumb or too inept to do it. This person is indispensable.

A lot of people would be willing to accept all this providing that the tyrant isn't dominating and self-centered after work. Under the gruff exterior some people demand a heart of gold. I'm not sure if I go along with that. It seems to me that in the real world you have to play rough to keep the ship afloat. Nice guys would sink it because nice guys can't keep the bad guys at bay. And you can't play rough part time. You'll never be good at it unless you're rough all the time and unless you actually enjoy it. Our tolerance of people like this enables the rest of us to live the humane and stimulating lives we currently lead.

Are there exceptions? Of course! John K 's a nice guy, so was Clampett. So was Bach! So was Mozart! But every leader and innovator can't be like that. We should have the wisdom to accept antibiotics with gratitude regardless of whether or not Pasteur was nice to his assistants.

The other philosophical film was "Pursuit of Happiness" with Will Smith. I almost didn't see the film, it looked so hokey. Boy, am I glad I did! The film reminds me of the old saying, "Nothing is as beautiful as a good man struggling against adversity." Smith's character is such a man. He doesn't blame anybody for his problems, he doesn't turn cynical, he just keeps focused on finding a solution, no matter how bad things get.

I don't know much about the Stoics but I can't help thinking about Smith's character as a stoic hero. I never took the stoics seriously because I thought their way of dealing with loss is never to want things in the first place, which seems drastic and unnatural to me. Things I've heard lately make me wonder if I misunderstood them. Smith's character definitely has an effective philosophy and if it turns out to be stoicism then I want to find out more about it.

PHILOSOPHY CORNER

UNCLE EDDIE: "Sophie! So you think it's wrong to label people. Tell me why!"

SOPHIE: "It's very simple, Uncle Eddie. Labeling a person reduces them to a simplistic cliche. You don't listen to the real argument people make because you're addressing yourself to a cardboard caricature."

UNCLE EDDIE: "But Sophie, labeling is necessary. Most people's thinking does fall into an existing category of belief, even if they're not aware of it. Recognizing that allows you to take shortcuts and get to the center of their argument quickly."

SOPHIE: "But each man is unique, especially the thinking man. Maybe each individual has his own deviations from the mainstream thinking of his side."

UNCLE EDDIE: "Of course he has his own deviations but it's still usefull to open up an argument by attacking the generalization he represents. This forces the man to quickly shed the indefensible parts of his argument. Doing that clears the air quickly and

focuses the argument on the real areas of disagreement."

SOPHIE: "Hmmmm...I never thought of that before. Uncle Eddie, it's difficult to argue with you. You're eyes...a woman could... a woman could get lost in them."

UNCLE EDDIE: "Many do, inquisitive one. Many do."

Note: Thanks to Mad magazine for the graphics. Buy Mad so I don't get sued.

THE GREEK TRAGIC HERO AND HOW THE IDEA RELATES TO CARTOONING

Believe it or not, the Greek concept of tragedy applies to animation and cartooning. By "Greek" I mean the Homeric Greeks. According to historian Warner Yaeger the Greeks thought about tragedy differently than we do. We pity tragic heroes, they admired them.

The tragic hero led a deliberately unbalanced life. He devoted all his energy into becomming supremely good at one important thing. He may have been a lousy father and an indifferent husband, he may have had no table manners at all, but in his field of expertise he was unbeatable. Of course this skill came at a great price.

The Greeks believed that sooner or later the tragic hero would be brought down by his inability to cope with menace from the part of life that he neglected. They admired the kind of man who took this kind of risk. Modern people admire balance. The Greeks (before Aristotle's time) admired imbalance, though they thought only special people were suited for it.

How does this relate to cartooning? If you have skill and a special passion for it the Greeks say "Go for it! Go all the way and don't look back. " You'll definitely pay the price, but it's worth it.

SUICIDE

The holiday weekend's starting and I don't think too many people will be reading this blog over the next three days. Good! Now's the time to sneak in a couple of serious posts! Brace yourself because here comes...


WHY SUICIDE SUCKS!

Everybody's had a bad patch when everything seemed dark and insufferable. I imagine that everybody (except Alicia) has at least once thought about doing themselves in. It's an appealing alternative to misery. If some painless way could be found to do it then why not? Here are the reasons why I believe it's a bad idea.

1) There are very few painless ways.

2) Your death would demoralize the people who love you and have helped you.

3) Your enemies would triumph. Your cause would be lost.

4) The fourth and final point, the thing that all this was leading up to, is this: you probably won't do it, and morbidly thinking about it all the time will just sap your energy. Let me elaborate.

 The fact is that for most people the little things in life...the feeling of air on your skin, the way grass smells... are collectively so profound and so satisfying that you could never bear to put them behind you. There must be a reason why so many people consider suicide and so few people actually do it. I think the reason is that we're hot-wired to enjoy our senses. We're hot-wired to be survivors. Think about suicide all you want but the overwhelming odds are that you won't do it.

Now if you're not going to do it, then thinking about it all the time is an energy drain. If you're going to slog through life anyway...and the statistics say that you will...then you'd be foolish to spend time walking around with the ball and chain of despair around you. If you're going to persevere through all that misery anyway then you may as well charge into it with both fists swinging.

My hunch is that when a person finally and definitively commits to living, no matter how miserable it gets, then he feels a burden removed from his shoulders. The problems that were bothering him seem easier to deal with because he can devote his total energy to them. That's the harm brought about by thoughts of suicide, that they take a person who may have an energy deficit and steal even more energy from him.

What do you think?